Claude Imports vs Rules vs AutoMemory

Both Claude Imports and Claude Rules appear to be used for breaking up context into multiple files, but there is one key difference that matters.

@imports in CLAUDE.md are for documentation and context — they provide guidance and understanding to Claude but are not hard rules. ("The developer handbook and technical documentation")
/rules are rules, rules that Claude should absolutely follow. ("I shouldn't break these rules")
AutoMemory is Claude's best guesses of trying to figure out how it should work. ("I know what my boss told me what to do, but implicitly figuring out how I should do it.")